Robots have invaded classrooms in Door County, leaving paths of science, technology, engineering and math in their wake. These are no ordinary robots, however. They are Lego robots, made by elementary and middle school children.

Three teams of students in fourth through eighth grade have been meeting in after-school programs to combine a love of playing with Legos and education.

The program, First Lego League, is sponsored by the Door County YMCA and is a globally recognized educational tool to get students interested in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines.

Many of the participants who got involved in the Door County Lego League became interested because they have their own Legos at home.

Lego League is a competitive program where teams gather bring their creations to perform tasks, gaining them points. Utilizing Lego Mindstorms technology, teams assemble robots which perform programmed, two-and-one-half-minute series of movements and tasks on a 4 by 8 foot playing field. Since this is the first time Door County students are being exposed to it, this year they are using it as a learning year.

“This is about teaching kids about engineering, science, math,” said YMCA CEO Tom Beerntsen. “It’s a great STEM program.”

Each year First Lego League issues a program theme for the year. The 2015 theme is “World Class” and is engaging children to envision and design classrooms for learning in the 21st century. Past topics have been national disasters and trash.

Students are coached by Mary Donaldson, Sevastopol Elementary School principal, and Donald Donaldson, Sunrise School elementary school teacher. Both of the Donaldsons formerly taught in the Twin Cities, where they became involved with First Lego League.

One of the other components of this program is having these students working together and developing respect for each other. The students are not all from the Sturgeon Bay and Southern Door school districts, but from around the county, including homeschooled children.

The First Lego League has the opportunity to make children think about machines that are used daily, like a welder at a car manufacturer.

“Those run all day, doing the same thing, producing high quality products,” Donaldson said. “Someone had to actually build it, program it and get it to do exactly the right thing.”

Each of the Lego kits offer different objectives for the students to have their creations do, which is a big part of engineering. Donaldson said that robotics is part of most engineering disciplines.

“This ability to work together, to talk, to decide when they want to take a break, it’s their decision,” Donaldson said. “I think that any way that you can get them to work together to go through and be creative, as far as how they are going to solve a problem, it’s great.”

During the students’ meetings, they are given tasks of building and programming robots made out of Legos. Each “robot” has a power center that can be hooked up to a computer, where the students use software to give the robots a course of action.

The robots are made to perform various tasks like moving a ball or knocking over dominoes. During competitions, bots are made to play out a “scene” on a mat, like picking up a tree from on top of a power line after a natural disaster.

“When competing, the students have to program their robots to go through a succession of steps worth points,” Donaldson said. “A big part of it is teamwork. Everyone has to decide, ‘What are my skills, how can I contribute to the team, what are the opportunities and positive team qualities I have?”

The robots have programmable units, but the children have to determine how they make them do what they want. There is a lot of trial and error during the creative and programming processes. The robot may do what was programmed, but not travel on the mat far enough to complete the task, forcing the team back to the drawing board to figure out how to fix the situation.

Parents attend the meetings, where the students receive minimal guidance about how to make their projects work. The parents get to watch and learn while their children work with their coach and the other children.

Sitting down for a snack and a chat is also a big part of the students’ weekly meetings. They discuss their projects and what they need to do.

“Sometimes it doesn’t look like the kids do a lot of anything,” Donaldson said. “As far as the kids are concerned, this is what real engineers go and do, talking about the problems as they run into with their projects.”

Armando Mejia said that he enjoys watching his fifth-grade son, Armando Jr., work with the Legos and has noticed a considerable change in his academics.

“I can see it in his way of thinking, and his grades in math have gone up,” Mejia said. “He is reading more about robotics, and all of his essays are about robotics. Its nice to see that he ties his studies to what he learns here.”

The Mejias are members of the YMCA, and Armando Jr., an at-home Lego connoisseur, became excited about joining the program.

“We gave him his first Lego set when he was 11/2, and when he was 3 he started building the bigger sets with 400-500 pieces,” Mejia said. “He took really well to the program, so much that he now wants to be a robotics engineer.”

Mejia said he has learned a lot, especially about how the children work together. He feels that the cooperation they are learning is going to benefit them in their future careers.

None of the students had any experience with robotics when the sessions began at the beginning of the year. The first few meetings consisted of learning the basics of programming and design. They also employed critical thinking in how to measure out the robot’s routes and purpose.

The YMCA is hoping to continue the program in the future, and to have teams be competing. There are three levels in First Lego League, the third being for high school students, but as the projects become larger and more difficult, the more expensive the kits become.

This year’s program costs have been shared by the students and grant assistance from the Raibrook Foundation. Southern Door and the Door County Economic Development Corporation have provided free space for the teams, and the Y has provided supplies for the Boys and Girls Club team at no charge as a part of an ongoing collaborative partnership with the Club.

Contact Alyssa Bloechl at abloechl@doorcountyadvocate.com or on Twitter @DCA_AlyssaB.